One mile

Published on April 27, 2004 By dharmagrl In Health & Medicine

I beat my goal of another half mile in the water today and swam a mile instead.

It wasn't that hard. I cheated and took a 10 second breather around the 3/4 mile mark, then pressed on. Had 'spaghetti legs' when I got out of the pool, but they went away after a couple of seconds.

I think that I'm going to start concentrating on my form tomorrow, and hopefully my speed will come up as my form gets better.

I love swimming! Sorry, I just had to say that!

Comments

JillUser

on Apr 27, 2004

Good job! I love swimming too. I miss it a lot. I grew up on a couple of beautiful lakes and spent all Summer swimming. My mom used to teach swim school. We would swim a mile and take classes in the morning, have lunch and nap on the beach, then swim another mile in the afternoon. Man, I would give so much to have a Summer like that again! At the end of the Summer we would have a "Lake swim" where the advanced swimmers would swim across the lake which was about 1.25 miles. We would be surrounded by boat escorts for protection. It was usually quite challenging because the weather usually got pretty dicey by the end of the season. One Summer I battled huge waves almost half way across only to have them pluck me out and reschedule the swim.

It is absolutely the best all over body, low impact exercise you can get. You use muscles you weren't even aware you had. I know the "spaghetti legs" you referred to! It feels like gravity doubled while you were in the water

What is your swim style? I prefer the breast or side stroke for long distance swimming.

greywar

on Apr 27, 2004

Outstanding! A mile in the water feels a *lot* longer than it does on land. I miss being able to swim regularly.

shadesofgrey

on Apr 27, 2004

Wow Dharma--I'm impressed! Must have felt great, especially since you were WAY ahead of your goal!

crimson

on Apr 27, 2004

I used to swim quite regularly, too. I've been interested in hearing about your progress... it's actually motivating me to enough to check out the swim schedule at the Y. Do you do underwater turns when swimming lengths?

apdelong31

on Apr 27, 2004

Congratulations! At least you can swim lol. My mom's like a big time swimmer but I guess I never picked up on those genes. Best of luck in the future.

dharmagrl

on Apr 27, 2004

What is your swim style?

Breast stroke for long distances, with a little elementary backstroke mixed in to give myself a bit of a rest. I front crawl for speed, and have managed half a lap of butterfly..that hurts my shoulder so I'm not going to try that again for a while. That's a really good description of spaghetti legs..it does seem like gravity got a lot heavier!

We went back to the pool this afternoon..I bought a family pass so we can go as much as we want this summer..and I got in another mile. A broken one, 4 or 5 laps here and there (in between helping my kids), but a mile total.

Do you do underwater turns when swimming lengths?

Yes, sometimes. Depends on what stroke I'm doing. I have to say, I'm loving this. My kids are all doing great; each one of them can swim the width of the pool unassisted and I can see them getting stronger and more confident every time we go swim. By the end of the summer they should be quite proficient little swimmers!

Man, I'd love it if we could have a JoeU pool party!

dharmagrl

on Apr 27, 2004

Ok, I'm sore now. I sat around after dinner and got stiff all of a sudden. I think a 2 miles in one day was too much. I'm still going back tomorrow, though....I think I've been bitten by the swimming bug!

stevendedalus

on Apr 28, 2004

Wow, you're a veritable Esther Williams or have mermaid blood in you!

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